Privacy and Cookie Policy

What we collect
For the purpose of making an enquiring or placing an order, our website may collect the following information. Your name and appropriate contact information including email address, address, preferences and interests. Other information relevant to customer surveys and/or offers may also be requested.

What we do with the information collected
Beer Merchants requires this information to understand your needs and provide you with more information for the product(s)/service(s) you have requested. Your information may also be stored in a CRM system for Internal record keeping. We may use the information to improve our products and services. We may periodically send promotional emails about new products, special offers or other information which we think you may find interesting using the email address which you have provided. From time to time, we may also use your information to contact you for market research purposes. We may contact you by email, phone, fax or mail. We may use the information to customise the website according to your interests.

Controlling your personal information

Beer Merchants will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your expressed permission or are required by law to do so. We may use your personal information to send you promotional information about third parties which we think you may find interesting if you opt-in to our mailing list. You may request details of personal information which we hold about you under the Data Protection Act 1998 and the current General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). A small fee may be payable. If you would like a copy of the information held on you or would like to request your details to be forgotten/deleted please write to or email us at [email protected].
If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please write to or email us as soon as possible. We will promptly correct any information found to be incorrect.

Website Security
We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

Payment Security
We will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information. We will never store your credit/debit card information on our website. All electronic transactions you make to or receive from us will be encrypted using SSL technology via [Trustwave Domain Validation] and will be transferred and processed by [PayPal Payment Solutions]. Of course, data transmission over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet. You are responsible for keeping your password and user details confidential. We will not ask you for your password.

External Links
Our website may contain links to other websites of interest or other associated parts of Beer Merchants. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over other websites outside of the Beer Merchants brand. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

A cookie is a small data file that is automatically placed onto your computer's hard drive. Cookie files are created by our website and placed onto your device in order to analyse and influence your preferences or behavior. Analytical cookies are designed to track your journey and experience on our website - so that we may tailor your experience and gather data. Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.
The majority of modern web browsers will automatically allow cookies to be placed onto your device. However you can usually modify your browser's settings in order to prevent any cookies from being placed onto your device. Setting your browser to block cookies may prevent you from taking full advantage of our website.
Cookies deployed by our website:

• ensure that functionality operates as intended
• remember your choices and preferences during and between visits
• allow you to share pages via popular social media networks including Facebook and Twitter
• allow you to interact with our website by leaving comments or opinions
• post enquiries via online forms
• track your visit for statistical analysis, allowing us to improve the usability, speed and security of our website
Cookies are not deployed to:

• collect any personal identifiable information (without your express permission)
• collect any sensitive information (without your express permission)
• pass data to advertising networks
• pass personally identifiable data to third parties
• pay sales commissions

Upon your first visit to our website, you may have noticed our banner alerting you to the use of cookies by our website. In compliance with the 2011 EU Cookie Law and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a small notice will be displayed when you visit the website regarding cookie usage and consent. Continued use of the website or agreement to cookie deployment will give consented permission for our website to deploy cookies until you choose to deactivate them within your browser settings or via the instructions below. Below you can learn more about the specific cookies deployed by our website, and how they can be disabled. For more information on the EU Cookie Law in the UK, we recommend visiting the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) website where you can find the latest information, guidelines and advice on the EU Cookie Law and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Social Network Sharing
We encourage users to share our content and/or like our profile on the popular Social Media websites Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn. In order to make 'Social Sharing' accessible, our website utilises widgets either provided directly from the Social Networks and/or via amalgamative widgets from third parties such as AddThis. Cookies and privacy implications from the social networks vary and will be dependent on your nominated privacy settings with each Social Network. Social Sharing buttons will only deploy cookies if you are signed to that respective Social Network at the time of being on our website.

Analytical Tracking
Our website has Google Analytics installed which allows us to track and compile anonymous visitor statistics. The information collected ranges from simple traffic volume to the type of browser you are viewing our website with. This information is valuable to us not just for marketing analysis and quantification, but to improve the usability, security and load speed of our website content. Google Analytics is a popular, secure, flagship webmaster product from Google. The privacy and security of Google Analytics data is a high priority at Google that you can read more about on Google's Analytics Data Safeguarding page. Google also offer a Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on that will allow you to automatically Opt-out of all websites that track your activity via Google Analytics. No personal information is collected by Google Analytics.

Cookie Consent Check
Upon your first visit to our website, you will notice a banner on the page alerting you to provide consent that cookies are being placed onto your computer by our website. In order for our website to remember your choice of opting-in, we store a cookie which expires after the set amount of days below (see table).

Magento
Our eCommerce website is built on the popular open-source platform - Magento. Magento and eCommerce platforms in general require the use of several essential cookies for the website to function correctly. A comprehensive list of the cookies placed by Magento are detailed in the table below.

Enquiry Forms
Our website's visitors can choose to contact us via form(s) on our website. In order to prevent spam enquiries, we protect our forms with anti-spam challenges which ensure the visitor is an actual living person, rather than a computer bot or spider.

Below is a table of information which lists all cookies deployed and used on our website.

Cookie Category
Cookie Name
Cookie Description

Cookie Consent
complianceCookie
This cookie is set by our website once you have seen and acknowledged our Cookie banner. This cookie will expire and automatically delete itself after [14] days.

Google Analytics (Universal)
_ga
The single default cookie for Google Universal Analytics. This sole cookie used by Google Analytics stores a unique client identifier (Client ID) which is set randomly. This cookie is set to expire after 24 months (2 years) and is refreshed each time you visit our website.

Google Analytics (Classic)
_utma
A Google Analytics cookie, which keeps track of the number of times, a visitor has been to the site, when their first visit was, and when their last visit occurred.

_utmb
A Google Analytics cookie, which creates a timestamp of the exact moment when a visitor enters a site.

_utmc
A Google Analytics cookie, which creates a timestamp of the exact moment when a visitor leaves the site.

_utmv
Used for reporting in Google Analytics classifying the visitor.

_utmz
A Google Analytics cookie which tracks where the visitor came from, what search engine was used, what link was clicked on, what keywords used, and where in the world the site was accessed from.

AddThis
loc, uid/uit, psc, di/dt, atuvc/bt/ssc/ssh/sshs/xtc
Allows users to share content via Social Networking websites and email.

Magento
CART
The association with your shopping cart.

CATEGORY_INFO
Stores the category info on the page, that allows to display pages more quickly.

COMPARE
The items that you have in the Compare Products list.

CURRENCY
Your preferred currency.

CUSTOMER
An encrypted version of your customer id with the store.

CUSTOMER_AUTH
An indicator if you are currently logged into the store.

CUSTOMER_INFO
An encrypted version of the customer group you belong to.

CUSTOMER_SEGMENT_IDS
Stores the Customer Segment ID

EXTERNAL_NO_CACHE
A flag, which indicates whether caching is disabled or not.

FRONTEND
You session ID on the server.

GUEST-VIEW
Allows guests to edit their orders.

LAST_CATEGORY
The last category you visited.

LAST_PRODUCT
The most recent product you have viewed.

NEWMESSAGE
Indicates whether a new message has been received.

NO_CACHE
Indicates whether it is allowed to use cache.

PERSISTENT_SHOPPING_CART
A link to information about your cart and viewing history if you have asked the site.

POLL
The ID of any polls you have recently voted in.

POLLN
Information on what polls you have voted on.

RECENTLY COMPARED
The items that you have recently compared.

STF
Information on products you have emailed to friends.

STORE
The store view or language you have selected.

USER_ALLOWED_SAVE_COOKIE  
Indicates whether a customer allowed to use cookies.

VIEWED_PRODUCT_IDS
The products that you have recently viewed.

WISHLIST
An encrypted list of products added to your Wishlist.

WISHLIST_CNT
The number of items in your Wishlist.

Most modern browsers allow you to control your cookie settings for all websites that you browse. You can disable cookie deployment completely by editing your browser settings, however in doing this you may be limiting the functionality that is displayed on our website. To learn how to disable cookies on your preferred browser we recommend reading this advice posted by Google.

If you are concerned about cookies tracking your movements on the Internet then you may be concerned about spyware. Spyware is the name given to a particular band of cookies that track personal information about you. There are many anti-spyware programs that you can use to prevent this from happening. Learn more about anti-spyware software - here.You can also disable Google Analytics on all websites by downloading the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.